James Blake has released a new song called ‘Loading’. It’s the second single from his sixth studio album, Playing Robots Into Heaven, following lead cut ‘Big Hammer’. Give it a listen below.
Playing Robots Into Heaven, the follow-up to 2021’s Friends That Break Your Heart, is due out September 8 on Republic.
Philadelphia punk and hardcore band Open City have announced a new LP, Hands in the Honey Jar, arriving October 6 via Get Better Records. The follow-up to their 2017 self-titled debut was produced by Arthur Rizk. Check out lead single ‘Return Your Stolen Property Is Theft’ below, along with the album artwork (by Jem Cohen) and tracklist.
“’Return Your Stolen Property Is Theft’ as a musical statement, showcases all the things we do best,” guitarist Dan Yemin commented in a statement. “It heavily alludes to mid-80 Dischord and early Ink & Dagger, while acknowledging what we all know in our deepest heart of hearts: the Faith/Void split is a false binary.”
“The intent for any album this band has created has always been to put together a collection of songs that hit hard, but also touch on a wide range of creative influence,” vocalist Rachel Rubino said of Hands in the Honey Jar. “I love Hatebreed as much as I love Beyoncé as much as I love Pissed Jeans as much as I love Bikini Kill, does that give you a reference for my contribution?”
Yemin added: “From a songwriting perspective we were looking for this record to be rendered from a more expanded palette of influences, while at the same time being more stripped-down sonically. While the band continues to exist in the context of a reverence for the basement epiphanies of the golden age of DIY hardcore punk, we were also making room for UK post-punk influences and some of the more hypnotic and repetitive tactics utilized by Lungfish and Unwound.”
Hands in the Honey Jar Cover Artwork:
Hands in the Honey Jar Tracklist:
1. Gassed
2. Lukewarm
3. Fever Dream
4. Blitz Kids Stay Sick
5. No One Thinks About You More Than You
6. Return Your Stolen Property Is Theft
7. Sentimental Scum
8. Bobby
9. Carry Us
10. Destined
11. Everything
12. Wolf
Mitski has released ‘Bug Like an Angel’, the first single from her recently announced album The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. The record’s release date has now been revealed, too: the follow-up to 2022’s Laurel Hell is out September 15 via Dead Oceans. ‘Bug Like an Angel’ arrives with an accompanying directed by Noel Paul, which depicts a woman staggering and collapsing outside of a bar, embraced and ultimately rejected by a choir of which Mitski is a member. Check it out and find the album’s cover artwork and tracklist below.
Billed as Mitski’s “most sonically expansive, epic, and wise album to-date,” The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We was recorded at the Bomb Shelter in East Nashville and Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles. It incorporates an orchestra arranged and conducted by Drew Erickson, as well as a 17-person choir arranged by Mitski. Working with longtime producer Patrick Hyland, Mitski drew inspiration from everything from Ennio Morricone’s bombastic Spaghetti Western scores to Carter Burwell’s Fargo soundtrack.
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We Cover Artwork:
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We Tracklist:
1. Bug Like an Angel
2. Buffalo Replaced
3. Heaven
4. I Don’t Like My Mind
5. The Deal
6. When Memories Snow
7. My Love Mine All Mine
8. The Frost
9. Star
10. I’m Your Man
11. I Love Me After You
Prewn, the project of Northampton, Massachusetts musician Izzy Hagerup, has unveiled a new single, ‘Perfect World’. It’s lifted from her upcoming debut album Through the Window, which was led by the track ‘But I Want More’. Check out both songs below.
“I wrote this song on a day when two relationships in my life came to a stop,” Hagerup said of ‘Perfect World’ in a statement. “A day when I found a lot of irony in all the conspiracies some believe and hold on to as if they’re all they’ve got. ‘Perfect World’ is written from the perspective of a billionaire so bloated with wealth he drinks baby’s blood to stay fit and terrorizes the world for his own benefit. He seems to enjoy believing everything and everyone is at his disposal.. But take away his wealth, look into those ravenous eyes, and you realize all he’s really seeking is a love that can’t quite be reached.”
Through the Window is slated for release on August 25 via Exploding in Sound.
Kevin Patrick Sullivan has put out a new song from his upcoming Field Medic album, light is gone 2. It’s titled ‘iwantthis2last!’, and it follows lead single ‘everything’s been going so well’. Give it a listen below.
“‘iwantthis2last!’ is about feeling the weight of the monotony of the album cycle/tour cycle/promo cycle lifestyle while also appreciating how far you’ve come and not wanting to let that go,” Sullivan explained in a press release. “It’s about being afraid to take a break because you worry you’ll be forgotten, but beginning to get desperately burnt out.”
Maya Hawke has offered her take on ‘Honey’, the title track from Samia’s latest album. It arrives as part of the Honey Reimagined series, which was announced with Blondshell’s cover of ‘Charm You’. Check it out below.
“When we were recording Honey for the album we added this ironic depth by turning what was originally a painful song into a kind of campfire signalong – big bouncy guitars, a happy melody, that endless refrain,” Samia shared in a statement. “So I was eager to hear what Maya would do with it. Surprisingly, she stripped all of the campfire away. In her version you can hear every bit of the desperation in how spare the production is. Exploring these new vantage points in my own work is exactly what draws me to the Reimagined concept.”
Hawke added: “It’s an amazing thing when a favorite person writes a favorite song. I was honored to be asked to cover ‘Honey’ and I wanted to bring out the sadness I felt behind the celebration. I loved working with Will Graefe as a producer. I’ve never recorded a song without him and experiencing him as a producer was even better.”
Lilts is the new collaboration between Wild Pink’s John Ross and Laura Wolf, who have today shared their debut single, ‘Dodge Street’. It’s set to appear on an upcoming EP called Waiting Around, which is out October 13 via Better Company Records. Listen below.
“‘Dodge Street’ was written as a game of telephone,” Wolf explained in a statement. “John sent me a voice memo called ‘Dodge Street’ after the name of the street where he happened to be parked. I chopped up the recording of his guitar strumming, reimagined the chord progression and sent him back a song structure with a vocal melody. He interpreted my demo with added bass and drums and from there I built a lyrical scenario originally intended to rhyme with ‘Dodge Street.’ Though the title didn’t make it into the song, the heart of the title remained. ‘Dodge Street’ is about the disappointment of living for someone’s else’s dreams.”
Wild Pink released their latest LP, ILYSM, last year.
Waiting Around Cover Artwork:
Waiting Around Tracklist:
1. Dodge Street
2. Kiss Your Face
3. Too Late
4. Waiting Around
Devendra Banhart has previewed his upcoming album Flying Wig with a new song, ‘Sirens’. Following lead cut ‘Twin’, the track arrives with a video co-starring multidisciplinary artist Dorian Wood and comedians Tim Heidecker and Mitra Jouhari. Check out the clip, a collaboration with Christian Stavros directed by Joseph Wasilewski, below.
“‘Sirens’ is about the bewilderment that precedes longing, the space between ‘everything hurts’ and ‘oh there’s a nail stuck in my back,’ it’s like the relief mixed with fear that comes from finally finding the target,” Banhart explained in a statement. “We haven’t hit it yet – but we know where to aim, that’s where the ‘And Yet’-ness of this song is. Another theme that seems prevalent throughout the album is obstacles into antidotes. I mean, what a bummer right? ‘Only the violence will ever hold me tight’ but if there’s no getting rid of then our only sane option is to learn to dance with it. This is all lyrical…musically we wanted it to feel like dancing alone, weeping in a crowd, and somehow even relaxing into that melancholy, the sensual side of sorrow, the mournful side of joy.”
“We wanted to make a mini sci fi film that was equally dystopian and utopian,” Banhart added of the video. “What we came up with was a world where only artists are allowed to run for any government positions, the presidency is always shared between two people. In our world two legends won, Tim Heidecker and Mitra Jouhari, and in this world everyone’s a masseuse and massages are mandatory (played by myself and the amazing Dorian Wood) and crying is obligatory and enforced by law.”
Flying Wig, which was recorded with Cate Le Bon in a cabin studio in Topanga, is due out September 22 2023 via Mexican Summer.
Be Your Own Pet have dropped a new single, ‘Big Trouble’, which will appear on their third album Mommy. It follows previous offerings ‘Hand Grenade’ – which marked the garage-punk band’s first song in 15 years – ‘Worship the Whip’, and ‘Goodtime!’. Check it out below.
“I live in a country that has taken away the basic human right to an abortion and then has the audacity to ask ‘why are you so angry?,’” vocalist Jemina Pearl Abegg said in a statement. “‘Big Trouble’ is about how the daily injustices are all connected to the overarching societal issues of living in a patriarchy.”
Mommy comes out August 25 on Third Man Records.
Becca Mancari has shared a new single, ‘Homesick Honeybee’, taken from their third album Left Hand. It follows previous offerings ‘Don’t Even Worry’ (with Brittany Howard) and ‘Over and Over’ (featuring Julien Baker). Check it out below.
In a statement about the track, Mancari explained:
Homesick Honeybee” came from a technique I practised during the making of ‘Left Hand’: Whenever I felt stuck in my writing process, I would pull out my 1980s Webster dictionary and scan through sections at a time. One day, I landed on the H’s, and both “homesick” and “honeybee” were words that lingered with me. I wondered; Could a bee actually be homesick? So, I did some reading and learned how a bee cannot survive for very long when it’s separated from its hive. Even if it finds another hive, the bees will not accept them into their colony because they smell different than the rest of them.
In some ways, this song is about my own homesickness; trying to find a place to call my home. The beginning of the song starts with a voicemail from my 93-year-old grandpa who was the first elder in my family to accept me unconditionally as a queer person. One time when he was visiting my parents, he quite literally asked me to “sneak” him out of their house in order to finally meet my partner of many years. In his words, “God is love and there is nothing that could separate him from me.” I think for years I starved my heart from love, for fear of being hurt again and again. But with one perfect act of love from my grandfather I learned how to build a home of my own, and to trust and love myself enough to let my broken heart finally start to mend.
Left Hand arrives August 25 via Captured Tracks.
Quick Access
Our Culture
Helpful
© 2025 Our Culture Mag Limited. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 2/1/2025) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 2/1/2025). The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Our Culture Mag Limited.
